Earl, James
Coogle, Diana
Coogle, Diana
2012-10-26T03:52:32Z
2012-10-26T03:52:32Z
2012
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12352
It is a pity that Old English poetry is not more widely known, not only because it is beautiful and powerful but because to read it is to experience a different way of thinking. It is also a pity - or opportunity - that many first-year Old English students express a "love-hate" relationship with the language. Therefore, it is worth trying to discover what there is in the poetry to interest the general educated public and create enthusiasts among undergraduates.
The multitudinous answers, found herein, have one over-riding answer: the Anglo-Saxon way of thinking. Old English poetry opens a door into a dim past by disclosing, in puzzle-piece hints, that epistemological world, which becomes more fascinating the more one pokes around in it. This dissertation seeks to give the beginning student and the reader from the general educated public a chance to wander in this landscape where, generally, only scholars tread.
en_US
University of Oregon
All Rights Reserved.
Anglo-Saxon
English literature
English poetry
medieval
Middle Ages England
Old English
As the Anglo-Saxon Sees the World: Meditations on Old English Poetry
Electronic Thesis or Dissertation

Earl, James
Waller, Benjamin
2014-06-17T19:39:58Z
2014-06-17T19:39:58Z
2014-06-17
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/17893
While the political and social spaces of Old English literature are fairly well understood, this project examines the conceptual spaces in Old English poetry. The Anglo-Saxons possessed a richly metaphorical understanding of the world, not merely in the sense of artistically ornamental metaphor, but in Lakoff and Johnson's sense of conceptual metaphor, which reflects the structures of thought through which a culture understands their world. Three domains exhibit developed systems of conceptual metaphor for the Anglo-Saxons: the self, death, and the world. First, the Anglo-Saxon self is composed of four distinct entities--body, mind, soul, and a life-force--which each behave independently as they compete for control in poems like The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Soul and Body. Second, death for the Anglo-Saxon is expressed through a number of metaphors involving the status or placement of the body: removal to a distant place; separation of the body and the soul; location down on or within the earth; and the loss of life as a possession. Predominance of a particular metaphor contributes to the effects of individual poems, from The Fates of the Apostles and Beowulf to The Battle of Maldon and The Wife's Lament. Third, the Anglo-Saxon world is a large structure like a building, with its three primary components--heaven, hell, and earth--each themselves presented as building-like structures. Old English poetry, including native versions of Genesis, reveal heaven to be a protective Anglo-Saxon hall, while hell is a cold prison. The earth, in poems like Christ II and Guthlac B, is either a wide plain or a comforting house. Christ I connects these worlds through gates, including Mary, characterized as a wall-door. Finally, the apocalyptic Christ III employs metaphorical spaces for all three conceptual domains treated in this study but dramatizes their breakdown even as it reveals spatial enclosure the overarching structure of metaphorical concepts in Old English poetry.
en_US
University of Oregon
All Rights Reserved.
Anglo-Saxon Mentality
Beowulf
Metaphor
Old English Poetry
Space
Metaphorical Space and Enclosure in Old English Poetry
Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
Ph.D.
doctoral
Department of English
University of Oregon

Earl, James
Hensel, Marcus
Hensel, Marcus
2012-12-07T23:14:41Z
2012-12-07T23:14:41Z
2012
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12552
Demon, allegory, exile, Scandinavian zombie—Grendel, the first of the monsters in the Old English Beowulf, has been called all of these. But lost in the arguments about what he means is the very basic question of what he is. This project aims to understand Grendel qua monster and investigate how we associate him with the monstrous. I identify for study a number of traits that distinguish him from the humans of the poem--all of which cluster around either morphological abnormality (claws, gigantism, shining eyes) or deviant behavior (anthropophagy, lack of food preparation, etiquette). These traits are specifically selected and work together to form a constellation of transgressions, an embodiment of the monstrous on which other arguments about his symbolic value rest.
en_US
University of Oregon
All Rights Reserved.
Beowulf
food studies
Grendel
monsters
morphology
philology
De Monstro: An Anatomy of Grendel
Electronic Thesis or Dissertation